Suicides cast shadow over Italy's troubled banks

David Rossi

 

  Rome—Banks rarely enjoy the best of reputations, even at the best of times, and two suicides have cast a pall over Italy’s scandal-plagued banking sector.

  The first, two years ago, by the head of communications at the world’s oldest bank, was not a suicide at all, according to the victim’s family. The second, last November, involved a small investor who had lost his life savings and served to inflame emotions in a banking scandal that has caused acute embarrassment for the government of Matteo Renzi.

  In both cases the scandals involved Tuscan banks, with allegations of political cronyism, freemasonry and connections to the Vatican.

  The body of David Rossi, a 51-year-old spin-doctor for the Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), was found in an alleyway in Siena on the night of March 6 2013. He had apparently fallen from his third-floor office window and local magistrates swiftly shelved the case as a suicide.

  With his bank under investigation for a variety of abuses, Mr Rossi felt under pressure, had told top bank executives he was planning to speak to the magistrates and had even sent an email to the managing director threatening suicide.

  His widow, Antonella Tognazzi, has never believed the suicide theory, though. David had discussed suicide with family members after a childhood friend threw himself from a building and insisted he would never do such a thing himself.

  In November her lawyer succeeded in getting the case reopened, highlighting the strange trajectory of his fall, the presence of a head wound incompatible with the fall, and bruises on his arms that appeared to indicate a struggle.

  Most extraordinarily, CCTV footage shows Mr Rossi’s body crashing to the ground and a small object, which turns out to be a watch-strap, floating down seconds later. Thirty-three minutes later another object, the watch itself, falls in an arc into the darkened street. Three marks on Mr Rossi’s wrist are compatible with the watch’s protruding winders, which could have dug into his flesh in the course of a struggle.

  “From the very start, there was a determination to promote the idea that it was a suicide. But no one who knew David thinks he would have taken his own life,” said Luca Goracci, Ms Tognazzi’s lawyer.

  Sources familiar with the case say freemasonry exerted a significant influence over the affairs of the Monte dei Paschi, founded in 1472 and a powerful source of patronage ever since, as well as over the local judiciary.

  A blogger identifying himself as the “Heretic of Siena” has suggested that MPS may have been laundering money through the Vatican bank (IOR), where it allegedly held four accounts.

  In a comment on the blog, a man adopting the name “Ettore from Piacenza” and believed to be former IOR President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, pointed out that MPS had opened accounts at the IOR in 2012 in order to take advantage of its Private Placement  Programme, an activity banned in Italy by the Bank of Italy.

  “The first of those accounts has the same number as the number memorised on the cellphone of the former head of communications at the [MPS] bank,” Ettore observed.

  The number is believed to have been dialled, possibly in error, from Mr Rossi’s phone shortly after his death.

  When the body of Luigino D’Angelo, a 68-year-old pensioner who had lost his life savings in the bankruptcy of the Banca Popolare dell’Etruria e del Lazio, was found hanging from a balustrade in his Civitavecchia home on November 28 there was little doubt about the cause of death.

  Mr D’Angelo, a retired electrician, was one of more than 1,000 vulnerable investors who had lost their money after buying subordinate bonds in four bankrupt provincial banks.

  The government of Prime Minister Renzi had stepped in to save the banks and their depositors but had made no provision for shareholders and subordinate bond-holders, leaving many small, unsophisticated investors facing ruin.

  Embarrassingly for Mr Renzi, the family of one of his key ministers had been deeply involved in the mismanaged bank.

  Maria Elena Boschi, the reforms minister, is the fresh-faced epitome of youthful meritocracy in the Renzi era and a rising star in his administration.

  It is true that the sins of the fathers should not fall on their daughters, but the opposition has leapt on Ms Boschi and the Etruria affair as an example of an unacceptable conflict of interests.

  Her father, Pier Luigi Boschi, was a longstanding member of the Etruria board and vice-president of the bank in the eight months leading up to its collapse. He was fined 144,000 euros by the Bank of Italy for his conduct as a director.

  Ms Boschi’s brother, Emanuele, was responsible for non-performing loans at the bank, and a sister-in-law, Eleonora, also reportedly worked for Etruria.

  Bank of Italy inspectors found the bank had spent 15 million euros on external consultants and paid its own directors and auditors 14 million euros just a year before the bankruptcy.

  Among the more hazardous loans made by the bank were those to a company planning to modernise the port of Civitavecchia and to build nine luxury yachts, a project that also enjoyed the favour of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena. 

  Before going bankrupt himself, the man behind the scheme, Mario La Via, passed on more than 300,000 euros in charitable donations to church institutions, including the diocese of Civitavecchia and a Ukrainian archbishop.

  Indeed, the Banca Etruria has had a shady reputation since Licio Gelli used an account at its branch in Arezzo to collect membership dues for his subversive P2 masonic lodge in the early 1980s.

  It is awkward for Mr Renzi – the man battling to modernise the country – that the Etruria scandal should reek so much of Tuscan freemasonry. Freemasons are sometimes seen as the white-collar equivalent of the mafia and their baleful influence can be just as hard to eliminate as that of their more thuggish southern cousins. Their self-serving cabals should have no place in Mr Renzi’s meritocratic modernity.